In silver halide color photographic materials, development of technologies to improve the image quality is an important subject. In recent year, means for attaining high quality with a small format have been developed successively, but the means are still unsatisfactory and a further improvement in technology is required.
On the other hand, although DIR compounds are generally used at present particularly to improve the edge effect, the generally used ones are DIR couplers that cause a coupling reaction with the oxidized product of a color-developing agent to release a development retarder imagewise forming a color dye.
However, when DIR couplers are used, if the dye formed in the coupling reaction is different from the dye obtained from the major coupler, color contamination occurs, which is not preferable in view of color reproduction. To prevent this, it is required to develop DIR couplers which form dyes having hues equivalent to those of dyes formed from major couplers of yellow, magenta, and cyan; that is, to develop as many as three types of DIR couplers having optimum reactivity, and since this means an increase in the cost for the development and synthesis, development of non-dye-forming DIR compounds is demanded.
Depending on the type of reaction with the oxidized product of color-developing agents, non-dye-forming DIR compounds are classified into two types: the coupling type and the oxidation-reduction type. The coupling type includes compounds described, for example, in JP-B ("JP-B" means examined Japanese patent publication) Nos. 16141/1976 and 16142/1976 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,226,943 and 4,171,223, and the oxidation-reduction type includes DIR hydroquinone compounds described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,379,529 and 3,639,417, JP-A ("JP-A" means unexamined published Japanese patent application) Nos. 129536/1974 and 546/1989, and Japanese Patent Application No. 21127/1990 or DIR hydrazide compounds described, for example, in JP-A Nos. 213847/1986 and 88451/1989 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,684,604.
When non-dye-forming DIR compounds are applied to color reversal photographic materials whose processing step consists of B/W development (first development) and color development (second development), the retarder is preferably released from a DIR compound in the first development. This is because the second development is quite high in silver-developing speed, since the second development is intended to rapidly develop all the silver halide that has not been developed in the first development. Therefore, if it is intended to work the development-retarding effect imagewise in the second development, the silver development is retarded and instability of the processing in the color development is involved, which is not preferable. Accordingly it is preferable that DIR compounds are reacted in the first development, but in that case it becomes essential to use an oxidation-reduction-type DIR compound capable of reacting with the oxidized product of the developing agent for the B/W development.
However, if an oxidation-reduction DIR compound is used in addition to the conventional yellow coupler, problems arise that the improvement in the edge effect becomes quite small and that the performance of the photographic material are liable to change during storage under heat and humidity conditions.